


Of Anchors and Snargaluffs

by breerann



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Mild Angst, POV First Person, Present Tense, more hints at future nevannah than anything, mostly hannah coping with her mom's death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 10:50:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7358260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breerann/pseuds/breerann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hannah runs away to the greenhouses but someone's already there.<br/>Alternately, in which Neville reminds Hannah she's not alone by helping her harvest snargaluff pods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Anchors and Snargaluffs

**Author's Note:**

> I know hbp leads us to believe that Hannah stayed at home for the remainder of her sixth year but I reject that. Also the timeline might not line up perfectly to the book, between Hannah finding out her mom's dead, the Herbology class starting snargaluffs, and Ron and Lavender getting together. Just keep an open mind.
> 
> My headcanon is that Hannah's father died during the first war so her mom was all she had growing up.

Professor Dumbledore gave me two weeks away from Hogwarts. Professor Sprout insisted that I could take as much time as I needed, but I knew time wouldn’t do anything for me, so I took the two weeks. What I needed was my mother, and short of that I just needed enough time to arrange and attend her funeral. 

 

Honestly, my memory of those two weeks is spotty. 

I remember the eerie stillness of the empty Hogwarts Express as I rode to meet my mum’s cousin at King’s Cross. It was like a ghost train, so silent without the buzz and bustle of happy students filling the compartments and corridors. I wandered up and down the train, visiting each car in the line in an attempt to do something. I’m not sure if I was trying to bring life to the train, or to myself. Maybe it was both. 

I remember taking kitchen shears to my long blonde pigtails in a fit of grief and rage the night before the funeral. Those pig tails, with their ribbons and their curls, belonged to a little girl, and little girls had mothers. I don’t have a mother anymore; she’s been taken from me. It’s time for me to grow up and so off came the pigtails. I’m pleased with how my self-administered haircut turned out. It’s a fairly level, and possibly even attractive, bob that makes me look older, and I feel older.

I remember the sleepless nights listening to my mum’s cousin snore in her bedroom. It wasn’t that the snoring kept me up, I was used to Susan snoring. It was the fact that Mum never snored, not even when she was sick. Snores were never supposed to come from my mother’s bedroom, but it’s not hers anymore because she’s not here to claim it. I spent those nights reading my textbooks, some kind of attempt to stay caught up even though I’ve missed two weeks of classes. I probably know the textbooks better than Hermione now. It’s almost funny.

I don’t remember the funeral, but I know what it looked like, because I had a hand in every aspect of its planning. I chose the flowers, the casket, the headstone, who would be invited to speak. I even spoke myself, and I know I must have cried, because the parchment with my speech written out on it is tear-stained. But I don’t remember it. It’s as if I’ve blocked it from my mind, probably because it was too painful. 

 

I stop in the entrance hall. I don’t feel like I belong here anymore. This was the old Hannah’s home. Pig-tail Hannah. Little girl Hannah. Hannah who had a mother. I am not her anymore. I feel as if the word orphan is hanging around my neck like an invisible anchor, dragging me down six feet under to where my mother is. That’s where I belong now, not here with the smiling and giggling students on their way to dorms or common rooms or the great hall. I’m about to turn around and leave, just walk back out the door, when I hear my name. Susan is running at me across the hall and before I can brace myself she’s pulled me into a signature Bones bone-crushing hug. 

“Hannah we missed you so much!” I can see Ernie and Justin and Megan over her shoulder, all smiling nervously at me. “I love your hair, let me look at it.” She holds me at arms length and spins me. I comply limply. “It’s beautiful, when did you get it cut?”

“The night before the funeral.” Susan flinches. I know I should have come up with something better to say. Words that were less harsh or arranged in a way that wasn’t quite so short. I’m supposed to be moving forward and Susan is trying to help me, but the anchor is holding me in place. 

“We’re all so very sorry for your loss, Hannah.” For once, Ernie saves the day with his immaculate, puffed up manners. He shakes my hand in a way that somehow manages to seem comforting, and the thick cloud that my words had formed dissipates. Justin and Megan both give me brief hugs, and we trail back to the common room. 

 

“I’m going to go unpack.” I announce after just a few moments sitting with them in the common room. 

They’re chatting stiffly about classes and classmates, trying to give me a run down of what I missed. Their words are buzzing unpleasantly in my ears and I feel like the anchor is choking me. Orphan Hannah doesn’t belong here and she isn’t worried about assignments she has to make up and she doesn’t want to gossip about Ron Weasley and Lavender Brown. I stand to leave, and Susan grabs my hand.

“Do you want any help?” She asks, almost desperately, and I can see how hard she’s trying. 

“No, I’m fine.” I feel bad because I’m not trying at all.

“We’ll come and get you when we go to dinner.” Megan offers with a timid smile.

“No, really.” The idea of eating dinner in the Great Hall is nauseating. “I think I’ll just go to sleep once I’m done unpacking, I’m beat.”

“Of course, travel is always so tiring. You know I always say-“ Ernie saves me again, and I leave before he’s finished speaking. I don’t care what he always says tonight. I don’t think I ever will again.

 

I actually unpack when I get into the dormitory because it’s something to do. It seems pointless, but it at least keeps me moving. I’ve just finished when I hear Susan and Megan outside the door, having a hushed argument.

“I think we should just leave her alone, Sue.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Megan. Her mum just died, she doesn’t want to be alone.”

“Well maybe that’s why she wants to be alone.”

“No. She needs to be with people who love her, to remember that there’s something to life other than death.”

“If she said she’s tired, then she’s tired. We should let her sleep.”

“I’m just going to go check on her, make sure she doesn’t want to come with us.”

I dive into my bed, pull the covers over my head, and try to stay as still as possible. I hear the door open and Susan softly calls my name. When I don’t respond, the door closes. I push back the covers, but I don’t move. I briefly consider staying, actually doing what I said I was going to and trying to sleep. I haven’t slept well since I got the news, but I don’t think that’s changing any time soon. I wait a few moments, either to see if I’ll actually sleep or to let the common room empty out, then I get up. A few stragglers are still lounging around the common room, but they ignore me. So do the students on their way to the Great Hall that I pass in the corridors. I slip past the entrance to the Great Hall and through the large oak doors onto the grounds with a particular destination in mind.

 

The greenhouse is all stillness, humidity, green, and the scents of fertilizer and dirt. I shrug off my robe. The air is thick and hard to breathe, but I haven’t gotten in a full breath in two weeks, and it’s nice to have a reason for it other than the anchor. For a few minutes it’s enough to just stand and breathe, but soon I begin to feel like I’m choking. I have to be moving. The tables in front of me are lined with Snargaluff plants, and I realize Professor Sprout must have started them while I was gone. I roll up my sleeves and pull my newly short hair into a ponytail. It doesn’t all reach the elastic, but I’m not bothered by the wisps of hair that brush against my face and neck. Someone’s left a pair of dragon-hide gloves on the table, and I pull them on, ignoring the fact that they’re far too large for my hands. 

I attack the nearest stump. The vines lash out, growing from the stump with alarming speed and scratching my face and arms. Some tangle in my hair and others wrap around my arms, but I manage to subdue them. Some I pin to the table with one hand, others with trowels and pots near by. It’s a struggle, hard physical work that takes my mind off the anchor. It’s perfect. The center of the stump opens and I plunge my free hand into it. I can feel the pods inside the plant, but just as I wrap my fingers around one, the opening snaps shut around my arm. I jump, startled, and the vines I’ve been holding down with my hand wriggle free. With one arm incapacitated inside the Snargaluff, I can’t get the vines under control. 

I’m about to give up and just set fire to the whole plant when someone comes up beside me and two long arms with large hands enter my line of sight and wrestle the vines to the table, forcing the stump to open up again. I yank my arm out, pod still secure in my hand, and suddenly everything is still. The vines retract as quickly as they appeared and the Snargaluff is once more an unassuming stump. The arms pull back and I look to see Neville Longbottom standing beside me.

“You know, you shouldn’t try to harvest Snargaluff pods by yourself, especially since you missed the first lesson.” He’s not being accusatory, really. There’s nothing severe about his words, but they rub me the wrong way anyway. I came to the greenhouses because I didn’t want to see anyone. I wanted to do something constructive and I certainly didn’t want to be saved by some stupid Gryffindor. 

“Oh really? And what exactly were you planning on doing here?” The words drop from my mouth the same way they did when Susan asked about my hair. I feel guilty about my behavior for the first time since I got back. It’s one thing to be short with Susan, my best friend, who knows what it means to lose someone to the war, but Neville-

“Actually, Professor Sprout asked me to harvest what was left after class today so there would be a fresh batch of pods for next time. I’d appreciate the help if you don’t mind sticking around.” He isn’t smiling in that scared way that Susan was, or looking pityingly at me like everyone else. It’s almost like the past two weeks never happened and we’re just two students staying late in the greenhouse. But there’s something in his eyes, and I remember that I’m not the only orphan at Hogwarts who lost their family to the war.

“Sure, it might make up for what I missed.” I shrug and manage something that even an optimist would be hesitant to call a smile.

“You seemed to know what you were doing.” Neville positions a pot between us on the table. “Ready?” I nod.

Harvesting the pods is easier with Neville to help control the vines. We still end up with more scratches, including a rather spectacular cut across the back of Neville’s hand, and I narrowly avoid a black eye, but before long we have them pinned to the table. I quickly retrieve a pod, managing to get my hand in and out without the stump closing around my arm again.

“I tried to stay caught up with reading while I was gone.” I pick our conversation back up where we left off as Neville sets about trying to break the pod. It’s not a job I’m about to volunteer for. “But I forgot about the stump closing around your arm if it’s in there too long.”

“It’s. A little. Alarming.” Neville punctuates each word with a vicious jab at the pod with a trowel. Finally, he succeeds and the pod bursts, showering wriggling beans into the bowl.

“Yeah, that’s one word for it.” 

I pull the next plant into place as Neville deposits the contents of the bowl into a different container. We work our way through the plants in silence, for the most part. Occasionally Neville will pass on some information that Professor Sprout shared with the class, and after the first few he insists that I practice puncturing the pods. We finish off the last of the plants, and I realize it must have gotten late. The greenhouse around us and the grounds beyond have the eerie quiet of late night. I can sense almost instinctively that it’s past curfew, and I think Neville does too. We clean up the greenhouse quickly, putting a few trowels and trays back in their place and lining the Snargaluff plants along one table. I realize I’m still wearing the spare dragon-hide gloves I’d found and quickly pull them off.

“I think someone left these here, I picked them up when I first came in. Do you know if Professor Sprout has a lost and found?” I hold the gloves out to Neville, unsure of what to do with them.

“Actually, they’re mine.” Neville takes the gloves and puts them in his bag, and I realize he must have known this already. I look at the scrapes on his hands, including that particularly nasty gash on the back of his hand that’s still oozing blood slightly, and I feel very stupid. Of course they were his.

“You should have told me.” I protest as we head out of the greenhouse.

“It’s no big deal. ‘Sides, your hands probably aren’t as tough as mine.” He mutters, rubbing the back of his neck.

I know I should argue the point, but I don’t. It seems moot to me, since the time when he could have used his gloves is past now. Besides that, I’m tired, something I haven’t been in a very long time. I don’t feel the need to keep moving, lest the anchor pulls me down completely. Now I just want to fall into my bed and sleep. It’s almost refreshing to be this worn out, and I’m a little bit glad I’m back at Hogwarts. 

 

We’ve reached the entrance hall and I’ve begun to walk towards the passage behind the marble staircase that leads to my dorm when I hear my name.

“Hannah.” Neville is standing at the base of the staircase, gripping the banister and one foot on the first step. “I’m sorry about your mum.”

“Thanks.” I smile a little to show that I really am grateful before I continue walking, and the sound of Neville’s voice stops me again.

“They’re not going to win, Hannah.” There’s a fierce light in his eyes and a sort of righteous anger on his face. “We won’t let them.” 

I nod once. I believe him.


End file.
